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A little bit of looking around and I found what will help me figure out power usage. The thing that sticks in my craw is that many things get great reviews, but if you look at the bad reviews you find all kinds of ugly. And, yes, looking at only the good is foolish. That is what an optimist does. He sees a majority of favorable reviews and ignores the rest, then whines ceaselessly when failure occurs until he finds another product with (mostly) good reviews. Something about doing the same thing over and over and insanity? Anyway, I figure if I order one of these, and get right on using it, I have 30 days with an actual guarantee for the cheaper one.
Before I can figure out my solar electric system, I have to have a clear idea about how much electricity I currently use. I can't plan for having appliances that use propane, or a wood burning stove, or anything else until I have those in hand. And, I may have to go with a system that won't cover all of my current usage and hope there is time to scale back in time. But I need to have a solid scale so that I neither overspend nor short myself "unexpectedly".
Something else that has to be noted is that, in the shortest of the winter months, we only get 1.9 hours of sun here. And, that is when it is not overcast (though perhaps that is the average including cloudy days?). We have another several months in the 2 hour and change range. While it is sunnier here than in Iowa, from what I have seen (which means little, in truth, as empirical data from a few years is void), that really impacts my best hopes for the system. And while a wind/solar system might sound good, this area is particularly windless coming in at the lowest wind production capacity rating available, making the much higher costs unreasonable for several reasons. So either I upgrade the system to provide something during those times, plan to cut back hugely in the winter the time when electricity is very important for at least lighting but also due to not being able to get out of the home as often or for as long, or a bit of both while figuring out how to change some the parameters by adding propane or other gas appliances.
This is not an easy trick. But I don't want to do what I have read others have done by building a system with high hopes only to be crushed by the reality on the ground. The truth hurts, but more so if you don't ever seek the truth in the first place. What was it? Ah. "How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise." Too late is simply just that, too late. You can always upgrade, unless you have used every resource at your disposal. Those panels need space, lots of it for a decent sized system, and they are expensive. Adding in the best would reduce space at a cost, and vice versa. A balance has to be obtained that works for your pocket and your land. This might be the more painful of directions, slowing all progress. But the pain is felt going in, not in the living. A few months of serious planning, sweating the details, covering for losses and problems, designing for needs and some wants, adding some padding for when even the worst case scenario ends up not being the worst, and knowing what must be cut from current usage versus living in the squalor of failed dreams. Just... that is all. Again.
You know, one of the things most people don't take into account is huge. If the economy collapses you will be spending a much larger amount of time in your home. For me, I see this amazingly easily since I am often stuck in my home. As a fact, my home has become more of an extension of my body than a place to dwell. Being desperately exhausted all of the time must be something like having diarrhea to a degree. Most of you have had that. With both of those, you have serious limits on how far and long you can leave a 'safe place'. If you have diarrhea for an extended period of time, you will more and more simply choose to stay home. It is the same with exhaustion. The world is unkind to the weak and ill. And, being in your home, you will use far more resources. When doing activities become dangerous because there are no medicines or doctors, you will cut your activities to only what is necessary. No more hikes to see the top of the world, no more hanggliding, no more wind surfing, no more camping unless to live in a cooler climate for a bit but it won't be the same. You will work and sleep. And you will not work eight hour days, the work will be far too hard.
I know they say farmers used to work from sun up to sun down, but I think you miss that the woman and young children were always at home. And that work was at a very slow pace, save planting and harvest times. Further, the man was always home for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Don't be fooled into thinking, depending on where you live, that you will be working long hours in 100 F plus or even 20 F minus weather. It won't happen. Your will is not stronger than your body and your body isn't so strong as you would like to imagine. You will be homebound and sucking juice or burning wood or using water constantly, like nothing you have ever known. Just... some more thoughts. Most people do not realize that most of their life expenses are subsidized by their employer. Oh? Oh yeah. Now... that is all.
If you tally up all your current electrical usage, then convert that number into a solar electric system with sufficient allowance for short winter days and sufficient battery capacity for long cloudy periods, you may end up rather depressed at the scale and cost of the system.
ReplyDeleteMy approach has been to buy the bare minimum (expandable) backup power supply that I can, knowing that most electrical usage will go by the wayside post-SHTF, and then looking for A) alternative ways to do what electricity otherwise would do and B) more efficient ways to do with electricity what only electricity can effectively do (for example the 12 volt chest freezer/fridges).
Carefully considered, in the end it usually is cheaper overall to take this systemic approach.
The good news for you is that people lived and thrived in that house for probably 50 to 75 years before ever the first amp of electricity flowed to it. It may be just a matter of discovering how they coped with the extremes and then finding (modern tech) ways to polish the edges off those extremes.
I do try to accept your advice. At this point, I still don't know enough to take it (because I simply don't understand). I will keep digging to try and make sense of it all. You are an engineer so you have to understand that if you don't understand something, generally you can't sign off on it if it is essentially your work. Yet wrapping your head around some things just isn't always quick or painless.
ReplyDeleteI will keep reading, and should be ordering that energy consumption tool to have some idea of scale and hope other things begin to sink in. I am not absolutely certain I could do it myself, but I think if the money was right there (and it might be), the incentive of system size might be incentive enough (say between 1.5kWhrs and 2.5kWhrs should I diy it?). The spread might be even more if I doubt if it would be less, between diy and contracted.
I know this house was well built, including the add-ons. But anything I do to modify is going to be expensive and complicated. Just adding a heating stove will require figuring out placement, creating a fireproof platform, considering upgrading the drywall to allow for a smaller footprint, developing a plan for venting, and of course paying. It's not the house, or even just me, it is money and time. But I am listening, as intently as I may.
re that kill-a-watt unit, I've eyed those for a long time as a tool for planning my 120v usage. But the longer I think and ponder and plan, the more I keep coming around to the wisdom of using 12v or 24v direct.
ReplyDeleteI have components in my system of what are probably the best, most sophisticated brand, the Outback. Even so, I am losing about 15% of the stored power by converting from 24 volts DC to 120 volts AC. If I can find appliances, lights, and etc. that run directly off 12v or 24v power, that is like bumping the efficiency of my system by over 15%.
Then there is this: most 120v appliances are not built with efficiency in mind. They are usually designed to meet a particular price point for the market, and except for greenies, most people aren't going to care if their appliance uses 50 cents a day of electricity instead of 25 cents a day. But when you're running 120v solar, that extra 2.5 kWh/day can add up to several hundred or a couple thousand dollars of additional solar capacity required as up front capital cost.
So I've begun to look at all of my 120v AC usage with a jaded eye and looking for ways to do it on DC.
Computers, for example. I have nearly a dozen wall-warts plugged in at my desk at the apartment, to run such things as the laptop computer itself, the DSL modem, the router, the external hard drive, USB hub, speakers, etc. etc. Every one of those things takes 120v AC and converts it **back** to DC voltage. Every one of those things could be run directly off 12vdc (if suitable), or driven by a DC to DC converter, and then *unplugged* when not in use to conserve power. There are even 12 volt power supplies available to convert a conventional desktop computer to direct DC usage. Not an external coverter, but an internal replacement for the computer's existing power supply.
Wall warts alone could drain my battery bank in a few days, with no other usage whatsoever. They will be banned in my house post-SHTF except for short term usage when a DC-DC coverter is not available in the correct voltage.
Also for example my CPAP machine. I discovered that my machine has an all-12v version, specifically designed to allow for camping, etc. I have that unit now. I don't have the 12v outlet next to my bed yet, but...woikin' on it! Woikin' on it!
That has some definite possibilities. Definite. Still, I would have to think having some of it converted to 120 would, at least in the short run, help for those things where there is no other option. Even if you only used it for a few things that have no dc possibilities, for a short time, as you became used to living without even that.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, but would it be that much more expensive to put a couple of outlets of, say, 120v 20a, maybe another with a little more pull, pulled off the dc, so as to have a little that way for whatever? I just like having options open. But I will start thinking on that and looking.
As for the wind "dryer", sure. You can even do it in the winter. It will, as I hear it, freeze dry. And you will be going to hand-washing clothes as well, but more like for me, wearing clothes till they are more dirt than clothe, at least more often than not. Simply, I won't have that much going to tend these things. So, for my part, it would be nice to have something, at least for occasional use.
Technically, I should be bed bound. A SHTF scenario is going to be a true nightmare for me. Actually having a wife and kids, at least as they grow, would make life a lot smoother (in some ways).